Textual Reflection on Hegel

Hegel’s paper Extracts From Aesthetics: Lecture on Fine Art covers three main topics. The first part examines the idea of beauty and the ideal, the second looks at particular forms of art, and the third discusses five major art forms. Hegel starts by discussing the word aesthetics. He says that the word means “the science of sensation, of feeling” (44) but this is superficial. Hegel says that a more appropriate term is the philosophy of fine art. Hegel talks about the beauty of art being higher than nature because “the beauty of art is beauty born of the spirit and born again, and the higher the spirit and its productions stand above nature and its phenomena, the higher too is the beauty of art above that of nature” (44). This is because an object in nature isn’t “free and self-conscious in itself; and if we treat it in its necessary condition with other things, then we are not treating it by itself, and therefore not as beautiful” (44). The spirit is the only way to comprehend everything in itself and therefore the beauty of nature is merely a reflection of the beauty of the spirit. The spirit must undergo an awareness of consciousness in order to reach “the true Concept of its absolute essence” (48). This idea of reality and the concept of the idea form the ideal. Forms of art are relations of meaning and shape rooted in the Idea. From this idea, we get the particular determinations beauty breaks down into. The changing relation between the content of art and its mode of presentation is responsible for the three forms. The first form is symbolic. In the symbolic form, the content is conceived abstractly and therefore can’t manifest adequately and “remains struggling and striving after it” (50). The idea is imposed on natural objects and is meant to be interpreted as if the Idea is present. Symbolic beauty cannot be considered genuine beauty because it does not fully understand nature and the divine spirit. The shapes are deficient because of the underlying conceptions of spirit. Also, in the symbolic form, the symbolic shape is imperfect because “the Idea is presented to consciousness only” (51). The classical art form is “the free and adequate embodiment of the Idea in the shape peculiarly appropriate to the Idea itself in its essential nature” (51) and has the ability to be completely harmonious. So, the classical art form is the sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit. True beauty can be found in the classical form. The romantic form mainly differs from the classical form because it’s content goes beyond the content can go in the classical form and the way it can be expressed. Romantic art finds its highest expression beyond art. Hegel then moves onto the individual arts. The first is architecture and it gives matter an inorganic nature. Architecture “levels a place for the god, forms his external environment, and builds for him his temple as the place for the inner composure of the spirit and its direction in its absolute objects” (54-55). The limit architecture has is retaining the spiritual over its external forms. The second, sculpture, is a form of classical art. While architecture can’t fully capture the spiritual inner life, sculpture “makes itself at home in the sensuous shape and its external material” (55). It is within sculpture that the spiritual makes an appearance in self-sufficiency. Painting differs from architecture and sculpture in a moral way because it frees the art “from the complete sensuous spatiality of material things by being restricted to the dimensions of a plane surface” (56). Painting allows us to see what a free sprit looks like, not what it embodies because of its medium of expression. This unique medium allows the possibility of nature in particular scenes and phenomena to be displayed. Romantic form is actualized through music. Music gives direct expression to free subjectivity. Music has an “antithesis to feeling and inwardness” (57) and is important to romantic art because it helps transition between painting and poetry. Poetry is the most spiritual presentation of romantic art. Hegel considers poetry the most perfect because it gives us the most concrete expression of spiritual freedom. Poetry is not tied down and is free in itself and because of this it is the “highest stage” (57). Hegel’s paper is about his claim that art is a presentation of beauty and beauty is a matter of both content and form. Beauty is about the spiritual freedom and life. Depending on the different periods, beauty takes a different form but this does not mean that the purpose of the art changes. “Architecture is the crystallization, sculpture the organic configuration, of matter in its sensuous and spatial totality; paining is the coloured surface and line; while, in music, space as such passes over into the inherently filled point of time; until, finally, in poetry the external material is altogether degraded as worthless” (57). Each of these individual arts can be found within the forms. It is poetry alone that “is adequate to all forms of the beautiful and extends over all of them” (58) because of imagination which is pertinent for beautiful productions. These realizations of particular arts in individual ways are due to the concept of art and the universal forms of the idea of beauty.